2012 Olympics

Zapatero optimistic after meeting IOC members, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is optimistic Madrid can win the right to host 2016 Olympics.

Zapatero acknowledged Thursday that it will be a tough call when International Olympic Committee members vote Friday by secret ballot to choose between the Spanish capital, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

"It's very hard to make any kind of predictions," said Zapatero, who has held meetings with several IOC members since arriving Wednesday evening.

"I had some contacts today, and I can say that I am a lot more optimistic," he said. "Since they say the vote is practically decided, that leaves one very important moment, which is the presentation of the bid."

Beside Zapatero, Madrid backers also include King Juan Carlos, tennis player Rafael Nadal, Real Madrid striker Raul Gonzalez and cycling great Miguel Indurain.

The Spanish capital, which also bid for the 2012 Olympics that went to London, says 77 percent of its venues are ready or under construction. Madrid also has hosted countless top sporting events and is familiar to many IOC members.

"We're a country that is very trustworthy when it comes to organizing sporting events, and the IOC knows it," said Zapatero, who also traveled to Singapore four years ago for the 2012 vote.

Another bonus for Madrid is Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president for 21 years before Jacques Rogge took over in 2001. Although he's nearly 90, Samaranch still has influence with some members and could swing a few crucial votes in Madrid's favor.

"I want to say that Samaranch has done so much for Spain, he has done so much for the Olympic movement," Zapatero said. "It means so much to us, so much for the Olympic movement."

The IOC, however, might hesitate to take the games to Europe again in 2016, even though Madrid has been portraying itself as the "Hispanic candidate" to distance itself from the European tag. The 2012 Olympics will be in London, and the 2014 Winter Games will be in Sochi, Russia.

The Spanish capital also is competing with Rio de Janeiro for Latin American votes. The tension spilled out when Spanish Olympic Committee vice president Jose Maria Odriozola reportedly called Rio "the worst" of the four candidates, prompting an ethics complaint from the Brazilians.

2012 Olympics

Zapatero optimistic after meeting IOC members, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is optimistic Madrid can win the right to host 2016 Olympics.

Zapatero acknowledged Thursday that it will be a tough call when International Olympic Committee members vote Friday by secret ballot to choose between the Spanish capital, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

"It's very hard to make any kind of predictions," said Zapatero, who has held meetings with several IOC members since arriving Wednesday evening.

"I had some contacts today, and I can say that I am a lot more optimistic," he said. "Since they say the vote is practically decided, that leaves one very important moment, which is the presentation of the bid."

Beside Zapatero, Madrid backers also include King Juan Carlos, tennis player Rafael Nadal, Real Madrid striker Raul Gonzalez and cycling great Miguel Indurain.

The Spanish capital, which also bid for the 2012 Olympics that went to London, says 77 percent of its venues are ready or under construction. Madrid also has hosted countless top sporting events and is familiar to many IOC members.

"We're a country that is very trustworthy when it comes to organizing sporting events, and the IOC knows it," said Zapatero, who also traveled to Singapore four years ago for the 2012 vote.

Another bonus for Madrid is Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president for 21 years before Jacques Rogge took over in 2001. Although he's nearly 90, Samaranch still has influence with some members and could swing a few crucial votes in Madrid's favor.

"I want to say that Samaranch has done so much for Spain, he has done so much for the Olympic movement," Zapatero said. "It means so much to us, so much for the Olympic movement."

The IOC, however, might hesitate to take the games to Europe again in 2016, even though Madrid has been portraying itself as the "Hispanic candidate" to distance itself from the European tag. The 2012 Olympics will be in London, and the 2014 Winter Games will be in Sochi, Russia.

The Spanish capital also is competing with Rio de Janeiro for Latin American votes. The tension spilled out when Spanish Olympic Committee vice president Jose Maria Odriozola reportedly called Rio "the worst" of the four candidates, prompting an ethics complaint from the Brazilians.

2012 Olympics

Zapatero optimistic after meeting IOC members, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is optimistic Madrid can win the right to host 2016 Olympics.

Zapatero acknowledged Thursday that it will be a tough call when International Olympic Committee members vote Friday by secret ballot to choose between the Spanish capital, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

"It's very hard to make any kind of predictions," said Zapatero, who has held meetings with several IOC members since arriving Wednesday evening.

"I had some contacts today, and I can say that I am a lot more optimistic," he said. "Since they say the vote is practically decided, that leaves one very important moment, which is the presentation of the bid."

Beside Zapatero, Madrid backers also include King Juan Carlos, tennis player Rafael Nadal, Real Madrid striker Raul Gonzalez and cycling great Miguel Indurain.

The Spanish capital, which also bid for the 2012 Olympics that went to London, says 77 percent of its venues are ready or under construction. Madrid also has hosted countless top sporting events and is familiar to many IOC members.

"We're a country that is very trustworthy when it comes to organizing sporting events, and the IOC knows it," said Zapatero, who also traveled to Singapore four years ago for the 2012 vote.

Another bonus for Madrid is Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC president for 21 years before Jacques Rogge took over in 2001. Although he's nearly 90, Samaranch still has influence with some members and could swing a few crucial votes in Madrid's favor.

"I want to say that Samaranch has done so much for Spain, he has done so much for the Olympic movement," Zapatero said. "It means so much to us, so much for the Olympic movement."

The IOC, however, might hesitate to take the games to Europe again in 2016, even though Madrid has been portraying itself as the "Hispanic candidate" to distance itself from the European tag. The 2012 Olympics will be in London, and the 2014 Winter Games will be in Sochi, Russia.

The Spanish capital also is competing with Rio de Janeiro for Latin American votes. The tension spilled out when Spanish Olympic Committee vice president Jose Maria Odriozola reportedly called Rio "the worst" of the four candidates, prompting an ethics complaint from the Brazilians.

woody harrelson

Harrelson to appear at Woodstock Film Festival tonight; check out our blog

Actor Woody Harrelson will be at the Woodstock Film Festival tonight, to take part in a question-and-answer session after a screening of "The Messenger," in which he appears.

Woodstock Film Festival Executive Director revealed this news to the Journal last night, during a party that followed the screening of "Woodstock: Now and Then," at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.

Harrelson will also be at the film fest's party at New World Home Cooking. The film is sold out and the party is a ticketed event.

Earlier Wednesday, the Journal reported that actress Uma Thurman will moderate a panel on women in film on Saturday morning. Catch up on all the latest film fest news by clicking on the link to the right, which will take you to music writer John Barry's film fest blog.

woody harrelson

Harrelson to appear at Woodstock Film Festival tonight; check out our blog

Actor Woody Harrelson will be at the Woodstock Film Festival tonight, to take part in a question-and-answer session after a screening of "The Messenger," in which he appears.

Woodstock Film Festival Executive Director revealed this news to the Journal last night, during a party that followed the screening of "Woodstock: Now and Then," at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.

Harrelson will also be at the film fest's party at New World Home Cooking. The film is sold out and the party is a ticketed event.

Earlier Wednesday, the Journal reported that actress Uma Thurman will moderate a panel on women in film on Saturday morning. Catch up on all the latest film fest news by clicking on the link to the right, which will take you to music writer John Barry's film fest blog.

woody harrelson

Harrelson to appear at Woodstock Film Festival tonight; check out our blog

Actor Woody Harrelson will be at the Woodstock Film Festival tonight, to take part in a question-and-answer session after a screening of "The Messenger," in which he appears.

Woodstock Film Festival Executive Director revealed this news to the Journal last night, during a party that followed the screening of "Woodstock: Now and Then," at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.

Harrelson will also be at the film fest's party at New World Home Cooking. The film is sold out and the party is a ticketed event.

Earlier Wednesday, the Journal reported that actress Uma Thurman will moderate a panel on women in film on Saturday morning. Catch up on all the latest film fest news by clicking on the link to the right, which will take you to music writer John Barry's film fest blog.

wave

Surf's up Wednesday: Google Wave update
Starting Wednesday, September 30 we'll be sending out more than 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave to:

• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback
  
• Select customers of Google Apps
  

We'll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations — Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too. This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well we will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave.

Some of you have asked what we mean by preview. This just means that Google Wave isn't quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, we've focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.

There are also still key features of Google Wave that we have yet to fully implement. For example, you can't yet remove a participant from a wave or define groups of users, draft mode is still missing and you can't configure the permissions of users on a wave. We'll be rolling out these and other features as soon as they are ready — over the next few months.

Despite all this, we believe you will find that Google Wave has the potential for making you more productive when communicating and collaborating. Even when you're just having fun! We use it ourselves everyday for everything from planning pub crawls to sharing photos, managing release processes and debating features to writing design documents. In fact, we collaborated on this very blog post with several colleagues in Google Wave.

Speaking of ways you could potentially use Google Wave, we're intrigued by the many detailed ones people have taken the time to describe. To mention just a few: journalist Andy Ihnatko on producing his Chicago Sun-Times column, filmmaker Jonathan Poritsky on streamlining the movie-making process, scientist Cameron Neylon on academic papers and lab work, Alexander Dreiling and his SAP research team on collaborative business process modelling, and ZDNet's Dion Hincliffe on a host of enterprise use cases.

The Wave team's most fun day since May? We invited a group of students to come spend a day with us at Google's Sydney office. Among other things, we asked them to collaboratively write stories in Google Wave about an imaginary trip around the world. They had a ball! As did we...
Finally, a big shoutout to the thousands of developers who have patiently taken part in our ongoing developer preview. It has been great fun to see the cool extensions already built or being planned and incredibly instructive to get their help planning the future of our APIs. To get a taste for what some of these creative developers have been working on, and to learn more about the ways we hope to make it even easier for developers to build new extensions, check out this post on our developer blog.